DAZN has acquired OTT platform ViewLift in a merger as the company pushes deeper into U.S. sports streaming and courts 20 teams that just exited Main Street Sports Group. Industry sources said the deal was priced at roughly $100 million and should close by the end of June.
The 20 teams include 13 NBA teams and seven NHL teams, all looking for local broadcast solutions for 2026-27. Rick Allen, who co-founded ViewLift in 2008, said the companies are already pitching those clubs and that the available teams will likely have three choices to weigh from the DAZN-ViewLift combination.
One path is ViewLift Classic, which would not include a minimum guarantee but would power and monetize a team’s direct-to-consumer app. Another is DAZN’s streaming subscription model, which in recent pitch meetings has come with minimum guarantees between $8 million and $15 million. DAZN has also said it would simulcast 10 to 15 games on a local over-the-air channel or 10 to 15 games in front of a paywall.
The third option would be for DAZN to move ViewLift’s current 15 teams onto its streaming service and recruit as many of the 20 former Main Street teams as it can, creating an aggregated hub similar to what the NBA is trying to build for its teams as early as next season or by 2027-28. Allen said the league is already talking with Amazon and YouTube about a centralized streaming platform, and he said ViewLift and DAZN are having the same conversation with both leagues.
Allen described DAZN as an enormous $16 billion, 4,000-person company and said ViewLift has been profitable for seven straight years. He said the backing behind DAZN is strong enough that teams would not need to worry about a missed payment, a pitch aimed at easing concerns for franchises that have been burned by instability in local media deals.
The merger also gives DAZN a stronger foothold in the U.S. at a time when it is trying to shed its outsider image and compete more directly for NBA and NHL rights. ViewLift already powers team streaming products including Altitude+, Monumental+, NESN 360, Space City Home Network+ and the Chicago Sports Network app, giving the combined company an established sales pitch as clubs look to replace their lost regional sports network distribution.
The friction is obvious: DAZN is promising scale and financial muscle, but the teams it is courting still have to decide whether they want guaranteed money, more control over their own apps or a broader hub that could change how local games are delivered. Those calls now sit at the center of one of the most important streaming fights in pro sports.
